


On Ice Capped Fires

by inconsequentialvrb



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Crossed Boundaries, Dubious Consent, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Trauma, Unofficial Sequel, Unsafe Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:01:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25007401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconsequentialvrb/pseuds/inconsequentialvrb
Summary: He didn’t care about being rough before, as long as they were on the same page — they weren’t, and this is what he gets for forgetting one of the golden rules for navigating people; you cannot let yourself assume anything.
Relationships: Edward Elric/Roy Mustang
Comments: 10
Kudos: 57





	On Ice Capped Fires

**Author's Note:**

> So I just read [What You Wanted](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13805298) by Carbynn and boy have I got some *feelings* !!! Rough and amazing and my trash compactor of a brain couldn’t let it go, so I wanted to keep exploring the possible ramifications of this au. Some things (see endnotes) I've modified but it’s overall parting from the same concept. I thought it’d be worth a shot so here goes :) 
> 
> Be mindful of the tags — I mean them.

The following week crawls with uncertainty and it’s almost too much to bear. It’s never been a good thing that Mustang is all-too accustomed to walking on the brink of things, but it comes in handy to be familiar with verges and thresholds, in times like these. 

He saunters through HQ with the practiced dose of faux casualness he manages to retain despite not having slept for days. With Ed’s hair still flowing through his fingers; his hitched, wet breathing still dampening his chest, tearing at his flesh as if it were wafer-thin wallpaper. For what feels like the upteenth time that morning, he tries — and fails — to exile these images from his consciousness through force of will and what he hopes is a very subtle press of eyelids. 

But as the memories of a wet towel stained with snot and blood seep into his mind, as the sound of Edward’s agonized pleading hits him like a wall on every corner, it soon becomes clear he’ll be walking into his office to officially inaugurate the highest level of uselessness ever known to the brass. 

By his second cup of coffee, he goes for the bottle of bourbon that’s kept at the end of one of his locked drawers — the only one to which Riza doesn’t have a key, at least not that he knows of — and splashes his morning brew with what he hopes is finally Hakuro’s successful attempt at murder, for he’s no stranger to liquidation ploys that involve poisoning his not-so-secret stash of liquor. 

He’s at cup number four when he realizes he’ll have no such luck. 

He stands, paces towards the window and realizes, after just a few moments, that he can’t even be bothered to attempt a wistful gaze down at Central’s finely groomed gardens before he goes back to his chair, recharges the fountain pen and twists his brain into compliance with reading through the requisition forms sprawled out in front of him. 

He ignores how unfamiliar his own signature looks, how carelessly he’s allowing black ink to smudge his palm, because Edward Elric still lays heavy on his mind as his own voice echoes through it, rippling with the overwhelming culpability of something he _never_ wanted. 

_“It hurts to reattach, doesn’t it?”_

_“I don’t care, I don’t, I need it back, Roy!”_

Lieutenant Hawkeye comes and goes, but Ed’s desperate wailing stays and bounces off the mahogany walls; it’s implications so heavy he’s sure the floor begins to creak. 

As it stands, he _is_ well acquainted with the edge of things, but actually crossing it’s lines and parameters, stepping out of the ledge and into an unforgiving void after pushing the man he loves before him, is not something he thinks he can live with. 

But apparently, live on he must. 

*

The first month drags, delays, lingers, _loiters_ with trepidation. It’s torture of a brand Mustang is certain he deserves, but had never seen coming. A month since Ed broke instead of bending, and didn’t dare stop himself from breaking even further. 

No one seem to suspect anything. Lt. Hawkeye doesn’t say a word if she does. He’s grateful, and spoiled rotten with how receptive his team is, how well attuned to his military persona. He does not deserve this, nor the stars that decorate his jacket; nor the shining silver sword that’s often clipped to his side. 

Alas, none of his privileges _whoosh_ away, it’s only continued evidence of how unbalanced the world is. Tipped over. Distorted. He’s ingrained in the planet’s sickness. 

He knows Riza understands, only differing in that she has actually managed to learn from her experiences. She has come full circle. She’d held a gun to his head and it had felt like a kiss, like mercy. But now, she doesn’t say anything if she _does_ notice his cup is spiked and re-filled in steady intervals. He doesn’t suppose she’s particularly interested in making it her life’s goal to look after vulgar, drunken men. 

Berthold Hawkeye even left a mark on him, and he wasn’t by any means a proxy-father; he was the man that gave him both the knowledge of alchemy and the (hah) burning curl of nausea that he associates with it. He was the first to instruct him in annihilation. What would become charred, ruined landscapes; combusted flesh. Blood and ash caked into his nostrils after he’d snapped his fingers so much they twitched instinctively in his sleep. 

He’s since become dilapidation incarnate — by his very own means, of course. But it wasn’t helped by Hawkeye Senior’s callous hand; the counted sets of chalk and text books roughly shoved in his direction; his scorching, fermented breath. The memory of it also taunts his throat with the prickle of rising bile, but it’s not like it used to be. It’s fainter, now, dulled. Like most things from his past; background static. 

He thinks back to a day in which his and Riza’s sneaking wasn’t as seamless as they’d thought it out to be. He tells himself he doesn’t remember details from when they’d stumbled back into her home; only Berthold’s menacing array, set a few inches in front of his inexpert self — too young, too prone to the whole teacher’s pet, authority-respecting shtick that did wonders for him when working the ranks —, his brute stare when looking past him and at his only daughter, delivering a single, acid line of “ _I’ll deal with you later.”_

He remembers her quietly sliding past the two and towards the creaking stairs, leaving a trail of wet soil and the distant scent of black tea. He wanted to hug her. Roy instead caught her gaze and used it to say “ _I’ll kill him if he lays a finger on you. I’ll do it; I will._ ”, Riza didn’t so much as twitch at his demeanor (like she didn’t either, when he agreed to use her back as a notepad made of flesh — again — cauterizing lines of already mangled tissue), at how valiant he thought he was being. 

She let her boots scrape against each one of the wooden steps, he at least heard what it meant. _“Men are imbeciles.”_

But he actually understands now. Whatever faults his teacher had, he didn’t take to his grave. They seeped into Roy’s skin as he hacked to death in his trembling arms, solidified like a crusted layer of filth between dermis and muscle. He understands now. 

He has always been cruel to Edward. 

He’s consumed him greedily, without contrition. Perhaps he’s the one who taught him that this is what love means — gritting your teeth. Taking it. 

Ed has virtually no one to compare him to. Ed _has_ to believe Roy when he says he loves him, even if it is actually true — even if nothing has ever been truer than that. Even if Roy feels said love down to his bones. They buzz and rattle with undeniable adoration for his entire being; every drop of amber, every last strand of hair.

It might be a disease. He might need a medical check-up.

The clock’s endless dragging ticks him back to present tense, where there’s still work to be done. He wants to spontaneously combust and disappear into the ether — but remembers he must still muster up the energy to drive himself home, where he’ll thaw in the thought of everything he’s lost, where he’ll have time to consider the steak knives that are itching to know his insides. 

Funny, that. Maybe he won’t even have to make it that far. His driving permit was a given attached to his rank, not proof of his actual ability to sit behind the steering wheel — that had to be considered a hazardous activity to someone with a subconscious death wish and very sporadic hours of sleep—. He wishes he could go on a tangent about it with Ed, because he’s about the only person who would laugh at him for it. 

He can’t, though, because he’s probably beaten every last bead of joy out of him. 

Perhaps now would be the best time to allow the wheels of his vehicle to lead him off a bridge, since, according to him, cars can drive themselves when given sufficient inertia. It’s common knowledge. And it’s never really been about distraction, but it’s comforting to think he can always blame it on that. 

Yes, he is suave and lazy and very, very stupid. And he didn’t see the sign. 

He absentmindedly reaches out to him. 

Ed is but a few doors away, a couple of short hallways stand between his office and the records department. He must be nose-deep in some documents from the Bradley reign that require going over, or in the middle of re-cataloguing research papers, careful not to crumple them with the weight of his right hand. Roy thinks of a glowing ponytail, deceivingly soft. 

Tensed in his hand. 

Roy thinks of him also failing to concentrate when similar thoughts invade his mind — of Roy’s hands holding him to the ground while he wraps his arms around himself and tries not to dry heave; tries to focus on answering Al’s letters and feign happiness while reminding him that he mustn't worry about money, because he is _good_ at his core. 

Breda’s voice peaks through his door in waves, he’s talking about having run into him. The team responds with unrestrained delight; Havoc sulks at his lack of recent visits. The familiar dread of caffeine starts hijacking his vein tracks and he wonders, then, if this is what Ed feels like now, if this is what he’s always felt like — because his anxiety is of a cutthroat brand.

And he doesn’t carry exhaustion as well as Roy does.

He doesn’t carry those bruises with any of the daring audacity he used to give to other — previous — wounds; sliced into his dermis with gusto, worlds away from the cracked lacquer of so-called civilization. A grinning mouth pressed against his own. 

Roy thinks of the anemic attempts at sarcasm that Ed still throws his way, whenever they do talk, perhaps only for snark’s sake. Only to see if it will stick. It barely does anything to hide the stutter that’s threatening to break through his words, every time. He barely dodges it, skates past it with hurried verb; but Ed is _trying_. He’s pushing himself at every turn, running on an emptied tank of volition. 

Every day he has to stop himself from running over to him on a frenzy, of barging into the archive office, grabbing him by the shoulders, saying “ _I have the growing suspicion that you’ve let me ruin you a couple of times already; that you’ve smiled at me before going home, feeling like a muddy grub and crying yourself to sleep. That you've returned the next day and smiled at me again.”_

The thing is, he’d cried like that before, only because he needed it. He’d begged and screamed — he’d bled and agonized, but came all over himself from the pain alone. 

It sufficed to say they didn’t hold back in the bedroom; they’d tried close to everything there was. They’d get pangs of divine inspiration and made up their own games — Edward pushed the limits of their play at every single opportunity, his appetite for stimulation of a magnitude Roy doubted could be compared to any other being in the universe. And it was just right, if he were being honest, that Edward Elric showed sex the same stamina and thirst for knowledge that he did any other enterprise in which set his resolve. 

Like the scheming, alleged-brass-traitors that they were (are), they’d plan their encounters, conjure up new scenarios, bounce ideas off each other, bathe in the other’s frustrated desire, their fervent performance. One would try to top the other’s proposal, one-up it to further intensity, higher stakes, augmented violence. Sex meant hunger. Ed bared his teeth and dared, _dared_ him to do his worse. 

Roy was elated to oblige, because even in the midst of their expanding grit, it was meant to be _fun_. It was supposed to drench in the same uncontested fulfillment of the secret library halls that kept their first, starved collisions; teeth and tongue, clumsy with uncertainty and hunting down every single millimeter of exposed skin. 

A first moment of true elation after the chips had fallen, and had been on the ground for quite some time, and had grown still, barely animated by the sporadic unconcerned breeze of a past filled with fight and explosions. Time passed and things settled, Alphonse crossed the desert and Edward returned from the quiet, cicada-filled stillness of the countryside not a single shred more harmonious that what he’d been before, looking to ascribe himself to another noble cause. Emptiness ensued. Touching each other suddenly made sense. It made perfect sense. It was right. 

And he doesn’t know what exactly drove him to prod into Ed’s barest disadvantage; to reach into the depths of his mangled core and rip it out of him without a seconds hesitancy, to say _“You know, I’ve been thinking that you’re grossly overpowered with metal extremities on your side.”_

To take the only two objects standing between a barnyard cripple and a State-endorsed weapon. These were his own words. Letter for letter of an undisputed self-loathing that Roy somehow managed to miss as a red flag — or rather, a weakness he couldn’t keep himself from playing with. Exploit it like it meant nothing; like it wouldn’t destroy Ed to be shoved to the ground, naked, laughed at. Reminded of his mother and a house reduced to ashes. Forced to drown in the fact that even if his brother was now bone and flesh, he would never pay his dues. 

Forced to squirm away from his mocking laughter, _"Where are you crawling to, Fullmetal?",_ to sink in the endless debasement he was being subjected to. To have his body ripped apart, it's detached pieces handled like garbage. He'd said _"Please,"_ and " _Stop,_ " and _"I can't do it, I can't do it."_ Drooling. Crying. Heaving. But none of those words were the right ones to make the session come to an end. He'd let Roy completely destroy him, and the General doesn't know what to do with that knowledge, other than let it scrape his heart raw. Ed can't think he wants a rag doll to abuse without consequence, Ed can't be willing to give that to him. 

Maybe it was just a matter of time, until something like truth catched up to them — Roy’s inherent malice. Ed’s overwhelming guilt. It got them with both their pants down; it turned the lights on and showed a pile of maimed guts under incandescent brilliance. Filth, tears of shame. Edward feels like nothing above a worm that’s to be grateful for anything a grimy shoe’s sole may give to him.

He doesn’t understand that roleplay isn’t supposed to hurt like this, because a child engendered trials like his most likely considers harm a comfort. He’s a walking cut that doesn’t realize it’s wide open. 

Roy does, though, and he didn’t pass up the opportunity to cover his index in grainy salt and push it in. 

He runs his tongue over the back of his lower teeth and still tastes scalding, caffeinated whiskey. 

The clock is finally pushing five pm, the hand’s rhythmic ticking a testament to the certainty of time passed — most things are irreversible. 

*

“ _Roy_ — Fucking — Don’t _do_ this, it — it’s fine, it’s fucking _fine_ really—”

“Edward, it truly is of no help that you’re quite shit at lying.” 

A part of him wishes they weren’t doing this in his office. 

But as it just so happens with circling around a topic, one ends up falling head-first into it’s muddy waters exactly while trying to jump over the puddle: at the worst of times. 

It’s past 7, but Hawkeye and Fuery have decided there’s no time like the present to do overtime in order to ensure extra work doesn’t pile up onto next monday. The door is half open, it avoids suspicion at the cost of their conversation being susceptible to interruption. For one, he doesn’t want Edward to hold back at the risk of embarrassing himself. 

On the other hand, perhaps it’s best that they stand on a semi-public space. Something about it makes it neutral ground — at least more so that his own house would be. He cannot risk intimidating Ed into compliance again, on any level, in any context. 

He clearly strains to keep his voice leveled, but so does Roy. Maybe he can grasp at straws here and indulge in the delusion that they’re equals in this. 

“Fuck you!” he hisses, “What the fuck? What the hell do you know about what I’m feeling, huh? You don’t know shit.” Roy turns a look on him that warns about the growing volume, and he’s never hated himself more. 

“You don’t know _shit_ .” He repeats, stepping onto the moving trail of discreet voice-tones. He doesn’t know what land mines are like; Roy wouldn’t tell him that they’re jumping around one right now, and that he’d better stop gesturing so wildly to the room at large if he doesn’t want to get them both killed — the bombs he’ll detonate are filled with individual nails of guilt and sadness and they’ll never make it. “I’m _telling_ you it’s no big deal, you can’t twist this on me, you can’t—”

“Would it help change your resolution to understand that I raped you?” Roy tries not to suffocate.

What with how little air he’s allowing in through his nose. He thinks micro-dosing oxygen might make this easier somehow. Easier on his heart, easier on his brain. On his body as a whole. Ed’s own breath hitches, any words he was working out smothered in his throat, leaving all but a choked note to prove they ever intended to exist. 

A moment passes and he wonders if Ed even heard him correctly, because his breathing is something like erratic. They each need to threaten their cardiovascular systems into silence if they’re to be able to hear each other through this forced hushing and the pounding of their chests. 

He looks down at the cabinet he’s standing in front of to avoid facing Ed directly. Varnished wood. He least hopes the softness of his voice came through, because this isn’t an accusation. This isn’t meant to be menacing inquiry; he’s not grilling Ed until he admits to being traumatized beyond cognition; this isn’t who they are anymore. He didn’t care about being rough before, as long as they were on the same page — they weren’t, and this is what he gets for forgetting one of the golden rules for navigating people; you cannot let yourself assume anything. 

Ed swallows, it sounds pained. Roy sneaks a glance back to him and suppresses a wince as Ed scrambles for a response — his mouth opens, then closes, then opens again. 

“That’s not…” It’s barely above a whisper. They’re both fighting tears well before their throats close up. He’s sure of it. 

“Ed.” He says, because they can’t play dumb at this point. 

He’s shaking his head, “No, no. Roy, I — _No._ That’s…” His vocal cords tense with overflowing disbelief. Now he’s truly whispering, but it has little to do with keeping up a front for the two people that stand outside. “That’s what you think?”

“The enjoyment was one-sided, was it not?” He refrains from adding _“And I have simply no way of knowing that that hasn’t been the case on more than one occasion”_

He also abstains from remarking that they’ve already been through this, because their last conversation was thoroughly fruitless. Instead of cooperating towards an understanding that would help them work their way through the woods, he insisted, alongside the trademark brand of Elric pigheadedness, that they fuck it out. 

It was a true calamity that Roy couldn’t, at the time, find it in himself to deny Ed’s requests any more than Ed could his, because it only ended with Ed’s whitening knuckles as he forced his throat to swallow every inch of Roy’s shaft — a deed which usually left him squirming around his own arousal by the time he’d swallowed, but which delivered no such results this time. 

He remembers Ed roaming his hands all over him the second they entered his house, getting busy with his clothes to distract from the fact that he wouldn’t (couldn’t) take his own off. 

_“Don’t you wanna fuck my mouth?”_ He paused for long enough to ask, “ _C’mon, I can — I can come from just that.”_ Roy suppressed a shudder that came from somewhere deep inside his brain’s free association, it had something to do with conjuring up the image of a battered dog, laying at his feet. Groveling. 

It wasn’t arousing this time. 

“ _No."_ He answered, perhaps with a little too much vehemence. 

Ed barely paused while sitting back on his calves, “ _Hit me."_

Roy shook his head, not even gathering enough courage to look down, _“No.”_

He should have warned him that his taste for sadism died an ironically sanguinary death the second he caught a glimpse of Ed’s previously-busted lip, and saw the beginning of what would likely be a permanent scar, from when the wound had transcended the border of his labium and broken skin.

“ _Roy, hit me.”_ For all his resolve, Roy couldn’t hear anything beyond a voice ruined by a bleeding mouth. “ _What’s the matter? Do it. Roy — please_ ” he added. 

It wasn’t fun when they were only _pretending_ to play.

When Ed proceeded to curl his fingers against Roy’s ankle and pulled it forward to press his boots sole against his clothed groin (soft, limp, unruffled), urging him to step on him, Roy found that his saliva was getting thick like molasses, increasingly difficult to swallow or even work it around his mouth. 

Ed was brimming with anxiety, trying to summon up the image of a time in which this was stimulating for both of them. 

There was (is) something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold. 

That night, they slept besides each other only for the sake of habit. Roy dared not reach over to the opposite end of the bed because Ed couldn’t help flinching at his touch and choking on his own spit — and feeling thoroughly ashamed of himself because of it. 

So they each confined themselves to their corner of silent sniffling and hoped the drop in temperature could be blamed on whatever bleak autumn air current had sneaked into the bedroom while they weren’t looking. 

They can’t play dumb anymore. 

Roy _will_ push a gun barrel to the underside of his chin if this ever happens again. He will pull the trigger, this time. 

“Y-yeah but…, I fucked up. I didn’t say the word, and I fuckin’ should have. Okay? I know that. You didn’t do anything wrong, though; you couldn’t have known.” He sounds too convinced — it’s borderline unhinged how fervently he believes himself to be blameworthy. It occurs to Roy that this is also how it’s always been with Ed. It occurs to Roy that he’d never given it a second’s thought — quite like most people don’t look twice at his own bad habits. 

And no amount of years and experience can deny the fact that he’s a proper idiot. 

“Ah, but I could have, Ed. This is exactly my point; we never discussed limb removal, you were clearly in distress—”

He keeps shaking his head, “In distre — When the fuck am I not in _distress_ , Roy? Goddamn — Stop being stupid about this, it’s nothing, I’m over it.” Ed’s body turns to the door, as if truly expecting Roy wordlessly follow him so they proceed to go fill their bellies at The Cretan Palace and forget this ever happened. 

He’s kidding himself. And Roy will let him have at least a shred of that feigned obliviousness, for as long as he wants it. He’s taken enough from him already.

But this dynamic is unsustainable. 

“You’re afraid of me.” He states. 

Ed halts and grinds his teeth “I am not.”

Roy looks at him; he’s changed out of uniform, as he occasionally does the second he’s no longer on the clock and the locker-room area isn’t packed with troop banter — more specifically, as he does on the nights in which going straight to dinner instead of back home is his famished body’s main priority. The spare clothes he keeps at HQ are meant to stop restaurant workers from wanting to suck up to a “glorified Major who didn’t even make it past primary education”, as he’d put it once. 

Roy looks at him with pause for what feels like the first time in the stretch of years that have passed since promised day. Since he’s adhered to the dress code pertaining to unsuspecting civilians. A white button-up and black coat. He recalls a time in which he’d allow for one of the automail’s bolts to peek through his collarbone’s curling scar tissue, bared by leaving exactly three buttons loose. It near enrages Roy to think that that Ed might be gone, buried under rubble from an avalanche of remorse that collapsed under its own weight — one that he’d been gutsy enough to carry all on his own, in accordance to not knowing how to live without it — that he’d been carving himself into a dirt grave and let Roy pour the remaining soil over him as he lay down. 

That Roy volunteered to weaponize his disability and point it’s barrel back at him, made him deepthroat it while he was at it. With all that wit and bravery, he managed to forget how big of a show it was — how disingenuous to the smear of shame and insecurity he actually felt. How maimed he actually was. Roy only got the most morbid of enjoyments out of a moment like that. 

“You are. You can’t stand me touching you, you’re forcing yourself to bare it in the hopes that your libido will reawaken —

“Shut up,” And he wishes he could, but Ed doesn’t deserve to be broken like this, he doesn’t deserve to feel such torment. It doesn’t suit the noblest person to ever live. The most brilliant of minds; the most astounding of empathies. 

He thinks of the exact moment in which Ed stopped fighting him, in which his body went limp with submission as he pounded into his ass, only interrupted by the sound of his growing sobs, the desperate begging he managed with his speech ruined by the two fingers he indifferently shoved in his mouth. He reckons he can pinpoint the exact moment in which Ed shattered under him.

“— but you’re realizing that it won’t, because that isn’t how it works. The body doesn’t lie. _Your_ body doesn’t lie, Ed, and it tells you that you’ve been violated. You’ve been hurt, and you don’t want me— 

“ _Shut up!”_ This time, there’s no chance Fuery and Riza haven’t heard him. And this time, it can’t pass as the tongue-in-cheek snide they’re used to hearing from him, because his voice is _fractured_. 

“— because I’ve broken your trust. I don’t deserve to go without consequence for that.” Roy doesn’t try to match his volume. He also doesn’t add that he can’t really trust Edward either. His judgement, his motivations. 

It’s with great intensity that yet another avalanche threatens to fall through. He hopes this time Edward doesn’t go for a violent approach, like he did when Roy denied him last time — when he didn’t step on his balls and didn’t let him choke himself on his fingers during a frenzy, when he pushed him off, as if burnt with Ed’s frantic attempts to prove himself unaffected by what had happened. 

He’d inferred that Roy wasn’t angry enough, and that all he needed was further incentive to lash out, to deliver the damage he craved for in order to feel purged from his inadequacy.

“What the hell? You — You’ve got it all wrong, Mustang.” He huffs through breathy laughter, but he doesn’t shove him like he did last time, he doesn’t spit the word _“Pussy”_ at him when he doesn’t respond aggressively as he keeps pushing his metal arm against his chest, his eyes glazed over with a layer of crazed fury. He’d never used such a term in a derogatory manner, that wasn’t him. Roy let himself be hit as he put his arms in the air and took breath after breath of grievous solemnity. 

_“What’s the matter, huh?”_ Push. “ _Huh?”_ Thrust. 

No. This Ed is simply distraught. His stance unstable, his gaze swimming through the room. 

“You can’t make me walk away from this j-just to make yourself feel better, you idiot. You can’t.” And it stings. And it hurts. It scalds, and none of it leads to absolution. 

“I don’t intend to make you do anything” He drops a few decibels because their conversation has likely derailed into the outside world by now, but one must keep one’s hope that it hasn’t. Or that even if this torment of a discussion has spilled through the door, he can go sheepishly mop it back inside, saying something like “ _Don’t mind me!_ ” He breathes. “But if you truly don’t realize why you must take some distance, then I’m afraid I’ll have to be the one to w—” 

“Wh— N-no, wait. Wait a second, just. Roy.” He walks towards him with shaky hands stretched out in front of him, his right one alternating in between holding air and rubbing at his face— it’s most likely not advisable to grind metal fingers into his eyelids like that. But this is how Ed does things; with efficiency and without so much as a sliver of self-preservation. 

He turns his gaze to him, wide with apprehension. It’s the same type he gave him when scared that he was going to be punished for crying while being forced to take his cock. 

This is his biggest fear. 

He thinks he’s being left. Abandoned instead of saved. Forsaken and forgotten, to try and pick up the pieces by himself, and last time didn't go well for him.

Now, he’d pushed himself through torture just to be sure that this wouldn’t happen. 

Unlike with his father, he now has enough time to clamber through the walls of his mind for enough words to negotiate with. To go against the clock and convince someone that he’s worthy of their time. 

It aches how much Roy loves him, it aches even further that he can’t get it through to him, that maybe no one can. 

“Please, look. We can talk, alright? We can talk it through, like you wanted. I — you were right, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have — I mean it-it was wrong of me to —“ He pauses, takes a ragged breath in, keeps gesturing with both hands “I’m sorry you feel I’ve been avoiding you, okay? I’m _sorry,_ I just needed some time… but it —“ Chunks of crystal start detaching, they fall from a great height without any certainty to cling to. 

“You’ll have all the time you need, love.” He's looking at a person who's never had time to lick their wounds. Someone who is most likely unfamiliar with the concept. This must sound like a threat. 

“ _Fuck_ that, you’re not listening to me,” He swallows “I’m — I’m sorry my stupid dick won't work, okay? It’s not like that, it—“

Roy loathes every fiber of his morally bankrupt being. He abhors the swift, practiced impetus with which he turns on his heel to fully face Ed and takes a full step forward in the same motion. 

He despises how automatically Ed takes a full step back. 

Aside from illustrating his point in what has to be the worst way possible, he pretends not to take notice of the way his shoulders hunch protectively and his soft hand clenches around the lower hem of his shirt. At what point had he actually managed to _tame_ him like this? 

A pregnant silence follows. It’ll deliver a gory birth. 

Roy takes Edward in, flesh and metal, a memory of a scent — a sweet afterthought of shampoo mixed with machine oil —, the sun-kissed skin, the constellations he has for eyes. Jagged ends and thorough patchwork. Sublimity incarnate. 

He fails to understand what faults destiny thinks it’s making him pay for. 

He shouldn’t have been able to have him in the first place. What for? Roy has just nursed him into sickness. 

He looks again and sees silent tears fall with no restraint. He’s clearly angry at him, but for all the wrong reasons. He’s also furious at himself. He's humiliated again, having no control over his body's reactions only ever worked for him in very specific scenarios. This isn't one of them. Roy's chest is caving in at seeing him like this. The avalanche turned out to be little more than a stifled whimper, but it’s somewhat relieving to see Ed let himself cry. It’s an unusual occurrence, to say the least. He never allows these breaths of alleviation — that was part of the whole reason he sought Roy out, no one could make him weep like he could. Even before it became sexual. 

He sniffs, his eyelashes are completely drenched; their honeyed tone darkened by the moisture. 

Roy crushes his eyes shut, the heel of his hand finds its way towards his eyebrow. The fabric of his black coat whispers with the motion. 

“I’m sorry.” He exhales. “I’m afraid I’m out of ideas on how to mend this…, I was hoping a few months could help.” 

At that, an actual sob escapes Ed’s throat and it bangs itself against the back of his teeth — resonates against the roof of his mouth, prodding his lips to let it out. He doesn’t budge. He stares at his shoes. 

He enlists the help of both his hands to rub against his eyes and try to jam salt water back into his tear-ducts. Its harsh in a split second, the back of his right hand grates against his skin again. This time, Roy doesn’t attempt to stay removed, he walks forward with none of the menace he purposely added to his previous step. He comes to Ed and takes his hands with his own before he breaks his skin. 

“Sweetheart,” He murmurs. Ed instinctively — _instinctively_ —turns his face away, but makes no move to pry himself out of Roy’s hold. These eternal gaps of silence only serve to remind him that Ed doesn’t need his help to get hurt. A persistent, prickly little bug of an idea starts nagging at the back of his mind. He doesn’t feel comfortable leaving Ed to his own devices after this. He doesn't want him crawling home with the scalding desire to wipe himself off the face of the earth; such sentiment is deserved only by the likes of him. He brings his knuckles to graze against his lips, he pays special attention to the metal hand. 

“Edward.” He says it like a prayer. He resolves to driving him back to the apartment he only got in order to have somewhere to have Al over when he visited, instead of staying at the dorms. To put a kettle on and make sure he feeds the adopted cats that pester him with the reminder of his younger brother’s enormous heart. To wait on him as he takes a hot shower and see that he eats something and tuck him into his bed. To pull a chair by his side and wait until his breath becomes heavy, the write a note — or perhaps a letter —, leave it on the table and be quiet about letting himself out. 

He sniffs again and stops biting the inside of his lip for long enough to say “D-don’t…, Don’t fuckin’ full-name me right now. I swear to God.” He doesn’t quite rise above a mumble.

“I’m sorry.” Roy answers. He isn’t, really. Not about this. He wants his name for safekeeping — to put it in a box of gold internally upholstered in velvet, to place it on a lavish silk cushion and lock it inside a crystal box that’s kept at perfect temperature. He’ll proceed to throw the key into the ocean so no one — but especially not him — ever gets the pleasure of using it again. He’ll be satisfied with getting the privilege of pressing his lips against the glass every once in a while, relishing in the memory of mouthing the word. 

This can’t be healthy. 

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this.” Ed tries. He swallows, his hands clench in his, he’s exhausted. “It’s not your fault, it wasn’t… _Please_ … ” Roy tries to imagine what his saliva might taste like at the moment. Prickled with anguish, carrying the sweet flavor of dementia; he still does not understand — he insists on it because he can't fathom what will become of him without someone to bend him over a hard, cold surface and remind him of what it feels to have purpose. 

No matter how disheartening it is to witness Ed’s cognitive dissonance from up this close, he can’t find the will to put any distance between them. He might as well just ask, 

“What makes you think I’d enjoy assaulting you — I mean truly doing it?” He keeps a softness to it because he won’t be able to take it back. Ed lets out a shaky breath, exasperated. 

“I — That’s _not_ what fucking happened—” He’s almost whining now. 

“Why? Because I wasn’t aware of your pain? Does that excuse me?” The tree falls even with no one around to hear it. It falls and shatters into the earth — the air ripples, the insects on the ground explode at the impact — even if it’s foolish enough to think it does not exist. Ed grimaces “Does that make you feel any less harmed?” This office — all it’s innocuous furniture, it’s regal presence — is going to be hard to come back to after this. 

Edward is restless, he usually excels at anything he sets his mind to, but he can't seem to manage justifying his abuse in a coherent manner and soon all resolve leaves his body, 

“I just wanted you to feel good.” He murmurs like the words only pass through his body, an invisible current of chilled air: he didn’t make them. They’re not evidence of true volition, they’re the result of endless repetition. _“You deserve to have everything you want.”_ He’d said. 

_“I just want you. That’s all. Just you.”_

All this begging has to stop. Roy doesn’t try to hide his grimace at the thought, at Ed's confession.

He is sick to his stomach to think just how long he could have let it go on for. He remembers shaking thighs, and blood flow had never been faster to flee from his cock at the sight of Ed’s fitful breathing, two incomplete limbs squirming aimlessly in reaction to his torso’s jerking. Edward's face smeared with his own blood from the falls he'd taken — all in all, though, he would have let Roy continue. He would have. 

Ed seemingly shares a sentiment of anguish and remorse, and before he knows it, a metal thump reverberates through the room. His knees abruptly press against the ground, Roy doesn’t let go of his hands and finds himself trying to use the hold as a means to pull him back up. But Ed’s nothing if not stubborn. 

He presses his head against Roy’s knee, yanks his left hand away and gives in to a type of joyous laughter known only by the insane. 

“Edward — Ed, get up. Please.” 

“I can’t,” He hiccups, bites down on a growing snicker “I can’t.” 

“ _Ed,”_ He gets down on one knee, he tries brushing docile hair away from his face, the touch detonates a first round of bursting laughter. He lifts his flesh hand and clamps it against his mouth to try and stifle the sound of his deranged mirth. 

Roy can’t stop his own tears but they don’t reach his voice. “Get up.” He’s cried counted times in his life, it makes every single one quite memorable. 

Ed’s shoulders shake with bubbling chuckles. 

He did this to him. Grumman doesn’t want him in front of the firing squad — just yet. He has to work harder. 

“Come on, here,” He tries coaxing his elbows into his hold, and upwards. “I’ve got you. Ed. Stand.” His smile is framed around fresh tear tracks. It grows, fueled by them, and he looks up at Roy with too much glee, but his eyes are far away. They’re searching for the wall that stands exactly behind him. 

His eyes twinkle, glimmer, _shine_ under the warm light of his desk lamp, which adores his face, adores his skin, adores his golden eyes. His shoulders shake with yet another round of hysterics; his breath hitches brokenly; he shakes his head ‘no’. 

“Edward,” he tries purring, “You’re having a panic attack — it’s alright. I’m just asking you to try. Here, hold on to my shoulders.” 

Ed shakes his head. 

“You can do this.” _Sweetheart, angel, love of my life._ He silently begs. _“You can leave me, you can.”_ He thinks. He bites his tongue. 

“I can’t.” 

“You can do this, please.” 

“No.” It’s delivered with the vehemence of a child’s tantrum, but his breath is still too irregular. It speaks of _him_ , a person finally broken by the world, finally delivered to the end of his wit — his strength, his humor, his resistance — by Roy himself. “No, no.” He laughs. 

Roy lifts his fingers to brush through strands of gold, a practiced motion that’d helped ground him in the past. He curls his palm at the nape of his neck and pulls him forward, tentatively. Ed complies, he lets his forehead rub against Roy’s collarbone. He drowns his laughter in the woolen fabric of his coat and lets his hair be combed through. He shouldn’t want comfort from the same person who caused him this anguish in the first place, but there’s no one else to give it. 

He strains to keep himself from savoring an intimacy he does not deserve. Because Ed is a moth dazed and confused by the artificial lighting that Roy poses; he goes straight to him in hopes that it’s the sun. 

After a few more moments, he’s moved on to attempt lulling him out from under the brutal effects of his adrenaline high. He knows it’s mostly an absent minded impulse more than it is a proven method, for Edward keeps producing stifled sound in the hopes that it’ll drown out the vibration of his thoughts. He laughs because it’s louder than the images his own mind tortures him with. Louder than the implications of what he’s admitted to. 

Roy foolishly hopes it’s working for him, at least for now. He tries endearments — Ed snorts. He’s just heard the most amusing joke, one that could kill with it’s hilarity. Something about the visceral pain of enduring weeks of torment and have it all be for nothing. Roy can’t give him what he needs, it’s a magnanimous irony for a man who is supposedly committed to prevent injustice, because Ed _can_ fulfill his every dream, just by gracing him with proximity. But Mustang… Is ruined. Blemished with too much corruption, too much rot. He doesn’t understand how he got so lucky to begin with. 

He waits for the laughter to bleed into a sob. 

It doesn’t happen, or else the windows would have caved in already. 

He snickers, chuckles, revels in daunting ecstasy. 

It dies down eventually. Like everything, it comes to an end before long, and he bites his mouth shut, he leans back and seeps in the embarrassment of not even attempting to stand, for he knows his legs can’t hold him up — not yet. 

Roy takes his head between his hands, runs the pad of his thumbs against his cheekbones — he wants to imagine he’s teared up from amazing sex; excellent news; an actual joke. He can’t. But he doesn’t lie to him, either. 

“Someday, maybe sooner than you think, you’ll be glad I made this decision.” He says. Unsure himself of what he means. 

Ed sniffles, shifts, he grinds the heels of his palms against the top of his folded thighs and works his mangled heart around his mouth. 

“Well, aren’t you lucky; to have decisions.” He looks away, Roy’s grip allows for movement. He has merely placed his hands on the most breathtaking face ever made, not coaxing it. 

He doesn’t beat himself up over the fact that he doesn’t want decisions, the fact that he never wanted them. Not on anything outside of obtaining his own death, and then, not much else aside from making Edward happy. It matters not. He’s failed on both fronts. 

“It’s important to me,” He starts, “that you understand just how much I’d be willing to be with you, even if I were to never lay eyes on a single inch of skin that transcends the lines of clothing. Just knowing that it meant you were safe, that you were comfortable — Ed, — that is all I want. But you have to be able to decide what it is _you_ want, at every turn. Always.” They’ve long transcended the moment in which they first said their “I love you’s”, Ed knows Roy is head over heels. Stupid in love. Mesmerized, fascinated, infatuated beyond belief. Or at least Roy hopes he does. As things stand, however, he probably doesn’t — or does, in a very twisted manner.

But it might be a novelty to propose for a future without sexual interaction. Roy knows he’d do without — it’s petty details when compared to what’s really at stake. Edward has to understand the health of their relationship is not dependent on that, even if it did start off in that manner. He wishes Ed wasn’t so prone to assuming things like these meant he was undesirable — and that not being wanted for fucking means he’s worth nothing as a human being. People often say that feeling useless is Roy’s achilles’ heel; it’s was just as much Edward’s. What a pair. 

At the moment, everything rides on Ed knowing that he doesn’t have to push himself. He doesn’t have to do _anything_. Least of all anything that involves baring himself to him, thoroughly unable to become aroused, digging further into his personal pit of despair as his body remains unresponsive. 

“You could take some weeks off — go visit your family, or even Al, if you’d like.” Ed makes a face, “Or I could ship you off to Briggs, I’m sure Olivier would be delighted to have a personal assistant—”

“Eat shit, Mustang.” Ed retorts, it’s warm. Even with the wetness of his throat, the grief stuck to his windpipe. “You’re not even my CO.” He never looks at Roy, and so he doesn’t see that he smiles. 

Ed still wants to cry, it’s clear to anyone who’s spent enough time by his side in order to take note of certain physical cues of it, however subtle. 

Roy wonders why in the world he’d never noticed how similar those are to the ones that indicate when he’s about to have an orgasm. All breaking points — collapsation, surrender. Tensing shoulders, twitching lips, a rib cage succumbing to a torrent of overwhelming sensation. 

He doesn’t want to look at how Ed’s fingers keep trembling, how his entire being still shakes. How evidently _alone_ he feels, even when held by him — perhaps especially because of that. 

“You forget how far my influence can reach, these days. You could practice your drachmanian if placed on border patrol.” He tries not to dwell too much on the fact that the automail makes Ed that much more prone to frostbite in favor of thinking (albeit quite unfortunately) that the weather-related pain might mitigate his inclination towards self-harm. 

Absolutely no one wants to give themselves over to the unforgiving claws of those godforsaken mountains, but it serves as a reminder of the undeniable existence of a world outside internal turmoil. On top of which, General Armstrong would be sure to keep him too busy for that. Roy marvels on how even if this proposal was meant as a joke, it perhaps wouldn’t be too demented to actually go through with it. Falman would be delighted to have someone familiar with which to share his encyclopedic knowledge of flora and fauna from the ice desert. But it must be his decision, at the end. 

Ed blinks sluggishly, but he was going for an eye roll — _that_ is what hope looks like. 

“Whatever.” He whispers. It’s after a shallow breath that he gathers the words to say “I can’t believe Roy fucking Mustang is telling _me_ to go get my shit together.”

And at that, Roy smiles again. Sad and thin. But he lets it through, because this is the bottom line; they’re both completely fucked. 

**Author's Note:**

> So Roy is a nb character in the original story, but I was curious as to how he’d arrived at that realization and meaning to write something about unhealthy male role models in his life anyway, so this could be a sort of confusing point previous to getting there. I know the timeline doesn’t go like that, I have no idea what I’m doing with this anyway, but thanks for reading. Also this is set in a post-brotherhood Ed-keeps-automail scenario as you, uh, might have inferred.
> 
> [tu](https://belalugoosi.tumblr.com/)


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